Sound bites from state and federal regulators.
Primergy Merger. Michigan regulators have OK'd the merger between Wisconsin Electric Power Co. and Northern States Power Co. The settlement assumes about 2 percent in cost savings on combined Michigan revenues, and imposes a four-year moratorium on rate hikes. Case No. U-10913, April 10, 1996 (Mich.P.S.C.).
Gas Pipeline Certification. Michigan certifies Thunder Bay Pipeline Co., L.L.C.
The Ohio Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has turned down a request by the City of Clyde to oust Toledo Edison Co. as a supplier of electric service for city residents in favor of municipal service.
The Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has declined as a general policy to require electric utilities that award a rate discount to an individual customer to offer the same discount to the customer's competitors.
The case involved Central Maine Power Co., which had negotiated a discount with Southern Container Corp. under its alternative rate plan. Union Camp Corp., a competitor in the corrugated box business, had then asked for a comparable discount, complaining of discrimination.
The Michigan Public Service Commission (PSC), facing questions on how fast it will move on retail wheeling and direct access, has suspended scheduled hearings on a request by MasoTech Forming Technologies, Inc. to set up a "cost-based, fair, and competitive" electric transportation rate.
MasoTech, a customer of Detroit Edison Co., had asked the PSC how and when it intended to implement recommendations concerning direct access offered by the Michigan Jobs Commission and transmitted to the PSC earlier this year by Gov. John Engler.
The Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC) has completed its mandated annual review under a price-cap plan elected in 1994 by Wisconsin Bell, Inc., saying the company must reduce rates for intraLATA message telecommunications service (MTS) under the price-cap formula.
The Ohio Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has granted rate increases for Toledo Edison Co. and the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. (subsidiaries of Centerior Energy Corp.) in the full amount requested, but at the same time has recommended that Centerior remove from its regulatory books $1.25 billion in electric utility assets over a five-year period.
Long-distance telephone rates for U.S. businesses dropped 7.9 percent from February 1995 to February 1996, according to the International Telecommunications Price Survey, released by National Utility Service, Inc. on April 16. At the same time, local calling rates decreased by only 1.5 percent.
Regulators in Minnesota and Pennsylvania have approved electric service tariffs with real-time pricing (RTP). In Minnesota, the PUC directed Otter Tail Power Co. to offer large-volume customers: 1) a customer-specific baseline load priced at a standard rate, with deviations priced hourly at the spot market, reflecting a profit margin plus marginal operating and outage costs; and 2) a simplified offer that eliminates the baseline calculation, increases fixed charges, and bills all energy use at the real-time incremental rate.
The Idaho Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has reversed a series of earlier rulings and has now allowed U S WEST Communications, Inc. to sell certain rural telephone exchanges to small independent local telephone carriers. Putting aside prior concerns that excessive sales prices would impose higher rates, the PUC found that projections of the ratio of purchase price to net book value had been overstated. It said the ratio had improved with recent increases in plant investment, as well as from a plan by U S WEST to contribute funds to replace switches in the sale exchanges.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has struck down as unconstitutional a state Commission rule that forced electric utilities that acquire a customer from a competitor to compensate the competitor for all associated costs and then pass such costs along to their own customers.
The court said the rule exceeded Commission authority by usurping the utility management function (em forbidding the utility to choose to absorb costs associated with switching customers.